Video

Press Release

New York, NY – Thirty-five protesters gathered during the lunch hour today outside the midtown Manhattan offices of Point Lookout Capital Partners, a New York firm that facilitates investment in Combined Systems Inc. (CSI). CSI, based in Pennsylvania, sells tear gas to the Israeli army that the Israeli army has then used to kill and seriously injure a number of unarmed protesters in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including on January 1, 36-year-old Jawaher Abu Rahmah from the village of Bil’in.

Dave Lippman from Adalah-NY explained, “The Israeli military is using tear gas manufactured by CSI and financed through Point Lookout Capital as a weapon to crush the growing unarmed protest movement against Israel’s illegal confiscation of Palestinian land for Israeli settlements. We as US taxpayers may be paying for some of the tear gas that Israel is shooting at Palestinian, Israeli and American protesters. The US government needs to stop providing deadly aid, and CSI and Point Lookout need to end their complicity in Israel’s violent repression of legitimate protest.”

Document

Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (adalahny.org)

CodePink: Women for Peace (www.codepink4peace.org)

Jewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org)

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (www.endtheoccupation.org)

DATE: January 3, 2011

Dear Combined Systems Inc.,

As US groups committed to justice and peace, we are writing to ask that Combined Systems Inc. cease providing CSI equipment to the Israeli government in response to the Israeli military’s ongoing and foreseeable misuse of CSI crowd control equipment to kill and maim protesters in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli military has demonstrated a pattern of misuse of your equipment, directly leading to the death and injury of unarmed demonstrators in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Over the last two years alone, the Israeli military has used your products to kill two peaceful protesters from one family in the West Bank village of Bil’in, to severely injure two peaceful protesters from the US, and to seriously injure many more. According to the the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, two other Palestinians were killed by Israeli tear gas in 2002.[1]

Press Coverage

AlterNet

Abstract:

Actions for justice are taking place all over the country, including some in which Adalah-NY and others have participated against CSI, a tear gas manufacturer whose products have been involved in the deaths of activists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Video:

Where: 331 Madison Avenue (at 43rd St) in Manhattan, Office of Point Lookout Capital, a company that helps provide tear gas to Israel

What: Street theater and vigil

On January 1, 2011, a 36-year-old Palestinian woman, Jawaher Abu Rahmah from the West Bank village of Bil’in, died in a hospital from the effects of tear gas inhalation suffered at a protest the previous day against Israel’s construction of a wall and settlements on Bil’in’s land.

Jawaher’s brother Bassem Abu Rahmah was killed in April 2009 when he was hit in the chest with an extended range CSI tear gas canister fired directly at him by an Israeli soldier during a peaceful protest in Bil'in.

Much of Israel’s tear gas is provided by the US company Combined Systems Inc. (CSI). The Israeli military is using CSI’s tear gas as a weapon in its effort to crush the growing movement of unarmed protest against Israel’s illegal confiscation of Palestinian land for Israeli settlements. Even more disturbing, you as a US taxpayer are paying for at least some of the tear gas that Israel is shooting at Palestinian, Israeli and international protesters. For more information please see Adalah-NY’s ACTION ALERT: Tell CSI to Stop Sending Tear Gas to Israel.